RE: Raritan Dominion SX Console servers.

  I'll throw my two cents into this discussion.

  I've looked at Raritan from their website and their
magazine ads. I tried to get a white paper once, and
was grilled by someone from Raritan on the phone before
they would send it, asking who I was, how many we wanted,
whether I was the final say in the buying decision, etc. 
(and I never received the white paper, so I must have 
been too small a fish...I guess I don't buy enough. ;-)

  I've been testing console servers for serial BREAK
problems now for 5+ years. As a general rule, "terminal
servers" send BREAK on power off, and most newer "console
servers" are safe. (There are some caveats, you can check
the BREAK-off test results to see what we tested, and
which devices passed or failed, and how we tested them at
http://www.conserver.com/consoles/BREAK-off/breakinfo.html

  The Raritan Dominion has been on my "want to test" list
for 2 years now, and I can't get one. Sorry folks. I tried.

  Bryan Stansell and I have bent the ears of any CS vendors 
that would listen, about the issues surrounding serial BREAK.
We *know* we affected one design in progress, and we believe
we have affected two others. Most vendors 'get it' now. :-)

  I don't know whether you will be able to use the Raritan 
with conserver. Raritan seems very sensitive/secretive about
the product, and I'm guessing that this carries over to how
they feel about security. In the case of Lightwave Communications,
the engineers felt that it was insecure to allow a remote
TCP session to connect to a port without authentication. They
wanted users to log in, and use the cyclic buffers on the device
to scroll back the logs per port. They were unwilling to even
consider making that an option, if their customer might want
to 'expose themselves' to that risk. (Their box WAS break safe,
but w couldn't use it with Conserver. The senior executives
were willing to consider the issue, but the engineers swayed
the execs to keep the security tight.) I get a similar feeling
from Raritan, on the small number of phone calls I've made,
trying to take a look at their product.

  I love their fun websites. Has anyone on the list got any
practical experience with one (or have the docs, to shed light
on the reverse-tcp functionality of the product)?

  I wonder if they'll be in the vendor hall at LISA this year.
(http://www.usenix.org/lisa05/promote/)

          -Z-